


Truthfully

by butnotdrowning



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 22:04:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butnotdrowning/pseuds/butnotdrowning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and John relate to lies and truth in very different ways</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sherlock

When he was a small child, Sherlock didn’t understand lying.

He couldn’t understand how people could just _make up_ facts, facts they _knew_ weren’t true, and it took him some time to wrap his mind around the idea. It took him much, much longer to understand that not all untruths are conscious lies – that most of the time, people say things that are wrong because they don’t know better, or because they just don’t care that they are wrong.

After Sherlock had his fourth kicking, screaming and hair-pulling fight with another child who had ”lied” to him, Mycroft sat his baby brother down and explained that most people weren’t evil or out to trick him, that they simply were stupid. Sherlock still hasn’t quite got over his outrage and strange disappointment at this. [And Mycroft still isn’t quite sure this was the right thing to tell him. True, Sherlock rarely tries to beat up people anymore, but on the other hand, he makes people want to beat _him_ up quite a lot.]

He still almost never lies. He is so intently focused on facts, on unraveling how things really are, that the idea of muddling the facts _on purpose_ seems unnatural and somewhat distasteful to him. Acting, though, isn’t lying. When he is in disguise – and he can slip into one at the blink of an eye – he’s not _Sherlock_ anymore, he is a completely different person, and this other person can, of course, both feel, think and say things that would be, respectively, impossible, alien or untrue for Sherlock.

Sherlock, as himself, is both too obstinate and too obsessively rational to lie, even when he wants to, even when he knows it would be better for the case, or for himself. He has been considering trying to _partly_ act, to see if this is could be a way of getting around his own mind enough to lie convincingly, but so far he hasn’t dared trying it for real, when it would really matter.


	2. John

John is an exceptionally good liar. He has a strong sense of empathy, something which makes it easy for him to see how people feel and to get into their heads without them noticing, and he is able to make people believe he is exactly what they want him to be. This is a useful skill for a doctor, who needs people to trust him and what he says. John used to think people believed what he said because he always believed it so strongly himself - or at least believed it would be to the other person’s benefit to believe it 

After he met Sherlock, he has discovered that it takes him no effort at all to lie convincingly about anything, anything at all, so long as it’s to do with a case or with keeping Sherlock safe (the two are becoming increasingly hard to differentiate between). He hasn’t tried lying solely for his own benefit yet; he’s not entirely sure he wants to know how well he’d be able to do it.


End file.
